Voting when the economy goes bad,everyone is in charge,and no one is to blame: The case of the 2009 German election

The economy was a major issue in Germany’s 2009 election. The global economic crisis did not spare Germany, whose economy is tightly integrated into the global economy. So when the German economy experienced a historical shock, did voters connect their views of the economy with their vote choice? Or did they, as some research has suggested, recognize Germany’s dependence on global markets and cut the government slack, especially when the government consists of the country’s two major parties? Using pre- and post-election panel surveys from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we investigate the weight that voters gave to the economy, relative to other considerations, when casting their ballot and whether governing parties were disproportionately judged based on the state of the economy.     

The Mixed Blessings of National Integration: New Perspectives on Development in Vietnam’s Northern Uplands

The ethnic minorities of Southeast Asia’s uplands, including those of Vietnam, tend to be portrayed as excluded from national society and locked into poverty, environmental degradation and positions of subjugation. Recent debates about Southeast Asian uplands-lowlands relations have questioned this discourse by highlighting the diversity of experiences, the agency of ethnic minority groups, and uplanders’ strategies of state evasion. This article finds that the integration of the uplands into the Vietnamese polity should be understood as an ongoing struggle between nation-building and state expansion characterised by grand visions on the one hand, and incomplete policy implementation and uplanders’ ambiguous stance towards integration on the other.     

Die Interzedentenwarnung nach § 25c KSchG

§ 25c KSchG legt in Satz 1 eine Informationsobliegenheit des Unternehmers gegenüber dem Verbraucher im Fall einer Interzession fest. Danach hat der Unternehmer den interzedierenden Verbraucher auf die wirtschaftliche Lage des Schuldners hinzuweisen, wenn er erkennt oder erkennen muss, dass der Schuldner seine Verbindlichkeit voraussichtlich nicht oder nicht vollst?ndig erfüllen wird. Unterl?sst der Unternehmer diese Information, haftet der Interzedent nur, wenn er seine Verpflichtung trotz einer solchen Information übernommen h?tte (§ 25c S 2 KSchG). Der folgende Beitrag besch?ftigt sich unter intensiver Berücksichtigung der jüngeren Judikatur mit den vielf?ltigen Aspekten der Interzedentenschutzvorschrift des § 25c KSchG, nicht zuletzt auch mit dem Mysterium der "echten Mitschuld".     

Ausfallshaftung und Kaduzierung

Eine jüngst ergangene Entscheidung des OGH (6 Ob 204/11k wbl 2012, 291) bietet Anlass, über das Verh?ltnis der Ausfallshaftung (§ 70 GmbHG) zum Kaduzierungsverfahren (§ 66 GmbHG) nachzudenken. Die Rechtsfrage lautet: Bedarf die Geltendmachung der Ausfallshaftung der vorherigen Durchführung eines Kaduzierungsverfahrens?     

The Prevalence and Correlates of Depression and Hopelessness among Sex Offenders Subject to Community Notification and Residence Restriction Legislation

Little research has investigated the prevalence of mood disturbance among sex offenders despite the fact that psychological distress may bear some relationship to community reintegration, and ultimately, recidivism. All offenders on New Jersey’s sex offender Internet registry were mailed surveys about their experiences with, and perceptions of, notification and residence restriction statutes, the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS). On average, respondents (N = 104) reported mild to moderate levels of depressive symptoms (M _BDI = 17.1) and hopelessness (M _BHS = 6.9). Additionally, offenders who reported being negatively affected by residence restrictions and notification statutes reported higher levels of both depression and hopelessness. Given evidence that sex offender specific legislation may de-stabilize offenders, this research highlights the importance of managing affective states in this population.     

Crime Control in the 2008 Presidential Election: Symbolic Politics or Tangible Policies?

Presidential candidates regularly use crime issues to help win electoral support. Contrary to conventional wisdom, crime control became an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. Despite decreasing crime rates and public opinion focused only temporarily on illegal immigration, the three major presidential candidates (Obama, Clinton, & McCain) discussed many anticrime initiatives during the campaign. Unlike past research which has found presidential candidates use primarily symbolic rhetoric in their anticrime rhetoric, all three presidential candidates in the 2008 presidential election were found to have employed tangible statements. The article discusses the different findings, making recommendations for future research.